> it can be quite hard to capture the economic benefits of the development This is a key issue, I think. When doing something technically innovative, a very co

> it can be quite hard to capture the economic benefits of the development This is a key issue, I think. When doing something technically innovative, a very common pattern is that the team that spends all the money & time up front to get the first working version is not the one that ends up with the successful market leadership: once the up-front investment is sunk, a 2nd team can much more cheaply iterate on the market/business side of things and capture the market without spending money on the R&D. Sometimes it might even be a different market, since inventions researched for one purpose may turn out to be applicable in another field. Patents are an attempt to provide a mechanism to reimburse the first group in that scenario, but are pretty imperfect. One reason I prefer to see research publicly funded is that I think it's often good that it's difficult to capture/monetize the benefits benefits of research breakthroughs. I'd rather not have researchers spending their time trying to figure out how to encumber/"own" the results of their research out of a need to get their investors an ROI.